3 comments:

Good Q&A James, I enjoyed reading it. I really loved your line about Fulci - His work has the stench of the grave about it. If that creeps into one of my posts, I hereby apologize in advance... I'm a big music fan so I love it when bands sneak in film references into their music, like Canadian group Godspeed You Black Emperor! naming themselves after an obscure Japanese documentary about motorcycle gangs, or Scottish band Mogwai opening thier live shows with snatches of the eerie folk music from The Wicker Man. I think my favourite bit of sampling is on Coil's Stolen and Contaminated Songs album which includes dialogue from The Wizard of Gore and The Reflecting Skin, which I must put down to Stephen Thrower's tenure in that band...

Great interview, James! For some reason, I love hearing about musicians' tastes in films and filmmakers'/actors' tastes in music. It's a way of getting to know the artists in a certain way and developing a better understanding of them. Keep up the great work.

Thanks guys. It was a very enjoyable chat! It's funny though because usually when I interview someone from a band it's about their music; so this was an interesting twist. Fred obviously adores Italian horror as much as we do. And I'm with you both all the way on reading about musicians' tastes in film (though judging by some of the unnecessarily harsh comments on that site, not everyone is in agreement. Oh well.). I'm looking forward to checking out Fred's side project, which sounds like it will be heavily influenced by the likes of Goblin and Frizzi.

Behind the Couch is a term used as a humorous metaphor to describe the actions that a state of fear may drive someone to: for example, a young child hiding 'behind the couch' when watching a scary film or TV show. Its use generally evokes a feeling of nostalgia: safe fear in a domestic setting.

In the case of this blog, it also denotes the reviewer hiding behind the couch in shame, due to the huge amount of trashy horror films he watches...

'The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.'

H.P. Lovecraft

'Like one, that on a lonesome roadDoth walk in fear and dread,And having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.'

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

'A shudder through the silence creptAnd death athwart the noonlight swept…Graves closed round my path of life,The beautiful had fled;Pale shadows wandered by my side,And whispered of the dead.'

Sarah Helen Whitman

'We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.'

Stephen King

'Human beings are the only living creatures endowed with a full awareness of their own mortality.'

Alex Lickerman, Buddhist Physician

'A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.'